In The Sea
by Novoux
Summary: The voices fade into soft babbles that sound more like streams. There's water everywhere all around him. Jim can feel himself getting lighter but he's going down, down, down.


It's really bright. Too bright.

White lights everywhere he can see. An ocean of white and bright and he's drowning fast.

Oh so bright.

It burns.

Then come the voices. He hears them from underwater as they shout hoarsely like they're having screaming contests. He's choking in breaths of water and his lungs are scorching.

"Get—he's—" Bubbles explode in his ears. Waves crash against his brain in deafening roars. Foamy bubbles gently move his body in the ripples of small waves carrying him out to sea.

"Res—" Drowning. The voice comes out in a gurgle. If only he could see who was sinking with him. If only he could see who was sinking with him in the wreckage of a phantom ship of a mind.

His chest feels heavy. Water soaks his clothing and brings him down, _down, _but his head's feeling so light like bright white—like he could float away.

Shrill sirens sound off and Jim Kirk is light and floating. Hoarse voices screaming all around him. Sucking in water and choking it down while the last bubbles of air quickly rise to the surface.

"Stay—wi—'s!" There's a crushing weight slamming down on his chest reminiscent to boards breaking under pressure. Slowly they splinter and groan and cry for the rain to stop and the waves to stop ramming into them but it's so pointless when no one hears. Even though his limbs are full of lead and sinking he can still jolt at the pain. Electricity sparks through him and it sets a burning trail of fire to his veins.

_Water, water, I need water,_

He opens his mouth to scream. To cry, to speak, just...something. Something to know he's still kicking and breathing or screaming. But he can't hear whether or not a sound comes out before the next jolt of electricity burns right through him and he's finally screaming or that's what his waterlogged brain coughs out. Then the floaty feeling goes away in a gasp of bubbles and foam. His head bobs in the gentle pull of the waves and foam rubs against his skin in a way that's kind of scratching and kind of soft.

He's drowning now.

_Oh God, it hurts—_

So heavy. Weighing him down like a bag of bricks and throw him out into the open sea. Whose idea is this? There's water in his lungs and everything's so agonizingly bright. His lungs heave for more air—_please, don't let me drown._ His body's last shrieking plea for help and his soggy brain is already slipping half-baked compromises and promises together to be shoved out of his white teeth under the obscure excuses just to be saved from _this_.

It hurts. He can feel his ribs snapping under all the pressure._ Poppoppop_—Make it stop, _please._

"We're losing 'im!" Gurgling voice that sounds hurt. More shrieking and shrill sirens. The light's beckoning him with a curling finger and a sweet smile surely covering the sneer beneath. Jim's all for façades and the empty truths when it's all he's ever heard. _Come on, let go._

His head's swimming. He's floating again. Drifting far, farther, further into the sea. The bright light's not burning so much. Everything drifts away the farther he goes. The voices fade into soft babbles that sound more like streams. There's water everywhere all around him. Jim can feel himself getting lighter but he's going _down, down,_ _down._

In the distance, he can hear the piercing cry of sirens as they drown with him and are muffled by the waves threatening to push them down further. He hears the frantic voices calling for him but can't hear what they're saying. His lungs are burning but it's the final slow burn before the dull ache fades.

It's too much, he tries to breathe but his chest is collapsing. His heart refuses to beat; gives up. Too tired. Don't want to. Lungs full of so much water they could be water balloons.

Jim's waiting for the something, that something his asphyxiated brain gave up on so long ago and now his painfully throbbing heart follows. Well, the rest of him not already pulled down and suffocated is. He's tensed and waiting for action. What action? Or is it reaction?

"Don't you—_dare_ give up!" Angry voice slips in and out of the water like a buoy complete with the quiet laps of gentle ripples slapping against the bobbing anchor. Suddenly Jim's being pulled up instead of sinking down. He fights it by thrashing with lead-filled limbs and cries and pleads _let me go_.

Fire blazes through his veins again. Too bright, too hot, too soon. _Burning, burning, fire, pain, drowning, helpmehelpme._

"_Clear!"_

Roaring into his ear like waves of a tsunami he can hear his mother's voice and suddenly he's five and hiding in the cellar with Sam and Mom. A tornado's outside and rain beats on the ground. She holds him so tightly and he can never let go of her so he has to cling to every last part of her and she speaks through the tempest raging in his pounding head.

_A storm's brewing, Jimmy._

He's heading to the surface now. He needs to get out; a storm's coming. _Help me, please, don't let me go, _he pleads to the invisible force pulling him up. All he can see is blinding white and it burns into his corneas so when he tries to close his eyes it's branded on his eyelids. Screaming winds tear through the sound of waves. They're howling and crying while the storm churns and twists so painfully tight in a vice. Jim can see the black mass of clouds and water cutting through the bright white. Just then the hand pulling him out of the water has let go._ Nonono don't let me go, please, I can't swim I can't breathe—_

The waves gathering in the twisting black clouds are roaring. He's being pulled, no, sucked in with a bruising force and can only thrash against the hands of the waves.

His body refuses to move and he's panicking and he still can't breathe—

_"Clear!"_

The stuttering reluctant climb before the fall on a rollercoaster. He's almost at the top and now he knows why he can't breathe yet. So he waits and gives up trying to get away and doesn't scream when the waves are getting too close to him.

_ohgodohgodohgod_

Down comes a surging black wave that crushes him with its force. It's so tall at its fullest height right before the crash. Jim can't fight anymore and not when he feels so light now. The slow burn's reaching the final spark before there's the flash of flames and rush of fire blazing to life before it all comes storming down. Jim remembers the deafening explosion when it rams into him with the gaping maw of blackened hunger that's been waiting for—swallows him whole and wrings out every last squirming sliver of life out of him and the urge to scream escapes but nothing comes out.

The sky bends the moment it's about to fall. There are cracks in the pale blue but no one can see them because they choose not to see them but they've been there for so long and why can't they just _look_ and _see_ he's broken and waiting for a somebody that won't just stare in their reflectives of their lives and actually reach out and _touch and see and look a little closer and and and_—he can't see anything about himself but a cracked shell of bitter and he needs a better mirror or just to shatter it all—

Down, he goes. _Downdowndowndown._ All that's left of him—nothing. He exhales all of all the water in his lungs in a sigh. Bubbles gently float to the surface.

Darkness, deep, black, and silent.

"_We're losing him!"_ Voice muted in the fading shrieks of the sirens.

Steady as she goes...

When he was a kid, Jim lived in Riverside, Iowa. When he lived in Riverside, there were tornadoes. And as a kid living in Iowa with tornadoes, he grew up with the ever-present fear of storms. Especially thunderstorms. He remembers Sam who teased him about it all the time. But when the tornado warnings blared on the TV through the white noise ripping through the previous tranquility of the day, he shut up about it and they headed to the cellar.

Mom was there once, visiting and probably preparing for when she would never to return. Said she had a couple days before she had to go back to work. Jim remembers this was the last time he'd ever see her again. Sam went with her some odd years later. Left him with Frank and a car that belonged to _Dad_ he had to wash and polish.

Tornado warnings blared on the TV while watching Saturday morning cartoons. Family tradition, if family means two brothers. Mom got a warning on her PADD. She left the room with the words of _I'll be right back, boys. Go pack up for the cellar. _Jim, being five years old at the time, was instantly terrified. Mom was on her comm, talking to someone he didn't know. Well, Jim knew no one but Sam, Mom's boyfriend Frank, and that nice lady at the supermarket who gave him a free chocolate bar and a sad smile when he told her his name.

So, Sam went off to go fill a pillowcase with canned food and candy. Jim's job was getting the water; they'd rehearsed this before. But Jim was mortified. Mom was finally home and he saw the black clouds twisting in the sky from the kitchen window. She told him to _be brave, Jimmy._

Mom was shouting at Frank on her comm and her voice was the tempestuous storm far worse than any tornado as she clashed with a vicious hurricane. _What the hell do you think you're doing get your ass back here from that damn bar—Frank wasn't ever so distant and untouchable when he was sober__—_Jim didn't mean to eavesdrop with his father's wide eyes and salty tears spilling clumsily over his mother's eyelashes. He was five years old and scared because Sam was gone and he wasn't in his room so please don't be mad Momma. Mom hung up the comm when she noticed Jim come into the room and the storm inside dispersed into uneasy tension. Momma held him close then, pointed out the window and said—

—_A storm's brewing, Jimmy._

Gasping, frantic, rush and splash of waves in his ears with lights so bright his eyes are burning. Heavy silence of unexpected surprise remains stubbornly. Where is he?

Screaming. He isn't sure if he was screaming but it becomes apparent he is when he hears voices around him. All of them are frantic and it doesn't help the fact he's screaming so loud his ears are ringing. His panic doesn't last long. Something's put over his face and then he's suffocating. It's a mask of some type that forces something into his lungs and it's not water.

His body thrashes while his brain is offline and already gorged with salty water. The voices are shouting frantic things to one another in a flurry of haste and rush. Something's holding him down, pinning him down and it only serves to bring up more panic and let it rise from the sinking debris. He can't breathe. The mask is choking him, he realizes. But he's so full of lead and waterlogged and seasick with waves swirl and pulling in his stomach. His throat's burning while his tongue is like a cotton ball. And for God's sake, he can't _breathe._

"—alm down, breathe," A voice commands him. Low, gentle, Jim can hear the fear of uncertainty in the voice. All he can do is try to listen because he aims to please. Maybe even do what the voice says. "That's it, breathe,"

Jim's not sure what he's doing but he's doing something right—for once, he should add. The voice is scratchy and tired but drained of the weight of the water and left damp with worry.

_Do I know you? _

Mom?

Fingers are in his hair, gently untangling the wetly matted hair. Mom's touch isn't there on his head and it isn't the one that's soothing him. The voice seeks his ears again and they ring with the arrival.

"Breathe," This time he's feeling strange. Lightheaded, airy: like he inhaled a lot of helium at Sam's birthday party and had a funny voice. Too bad he passed out. Right now he doesn't think he can even talk.

Darkness grips him. Blinding white lights fade into dark black. But he doesn't want this. No, there's no telling what's in there _don't let me go_.

"Shh," Fingers are gentle and touch his forehead. They leave a mark that burns slightly when they pull away. Jim doesn't want them to go. They can't, no, not now. He'll drown and drown and—

"—he's going into shock!" Sirens are going off and they hurt his ears. _Shut up,_ he wants to scream at them and pull it down with him. Fingers come back and thread through the aching need of touch that's been hidden under blond hair. They keep him afloat. "Hey, breathe," When he does, the world gets a bit darker. He's scared but the fingers gingerly squeeze his even though he can barely feel it.

Jim fades deeper and deeper into darkness. He's scared but he'd never admit it. _Just__—don't __let me go, please_—

"'m not going anywhere." Voice of fingers murmurs. It's different from the shouts of the other voices and reminds him of a paper boat Sam made one summer and put it in the creek behind their house. It floats away into darkness never to be seen again

Everything is silent. Darkness; the voice is sailing away.

_Don't let me go, _he pleads. Doesn't even know if he's talking. Or who he's talking to.

_I'm not about to. _

That voice is not Sam's. Or Mom's. Mom never answered him. She might've said something, but her voice drowned in the rain.

He wakes again and it's like resurfacing after one of those breath-holding contests he had with Sam at the river: gasping, cold, wheezing, and shivering. But instead of rapidly blinking the water out of his eyes and sucking down gulps of air, Jim can't open his eyes. All there is to see is darkness and icy rain pelting down his back—he can't breathe. And then there's the screeching alarm that's so close to him he winces and tries to cover his ears. His arms are numb and lie at his sides and he shouts at them to _move._

All attempts are in vain because he's not getting anywhere and the whine still shrieks at him. The voices come back again and they're being loud and it hurts, _oh God it hurts. _The fire that once was in his veins has turned into lava. Each pound of his heart sends lava erupting into his muscles and bones. It hurts and it burns so badly and he could just scream to make it stop.

Everything hurts. Throbs, burns, every type of torture known to man all at once with each and every fiber of his being in agony. If his lungs could catch fire, they would when he starts to scream.

It hurts. He can't see. What the hell is wrong with him, why can't he see? He's not even sure if his eyes are open or shut because all he can see is absolutely nothing and it's scaring him like when Frank locked him in the closet andandand—

"Breathe!" Hands are on him and he can tell because there's an added weight to his arms. "Breathe!"

Jim chooses not to listen. He's in too agony and he doesn't understand why he can't see at all. There's an ocean flooding his ears and it's too dark. Waves crash against his ears and he starts screaming. The voice closest to him is telling him to calm down and saying other things Jim doesn't hear. He's drowning again like he's just been in the crashing waves the entire time and just resurfaced for a breath of salty air and it burns his throat like saltwater.

Jim's not entirely sure if he's stopped screaming or if he even made a sound in the first place but the voice does get louder in his ear. And it's softly talking to him, _breathe_ _in, breathe out,_ it commands. _H__ush, you're going to be fine. Don't panic, no, calm down._

Finally he can breathe and there's something shoving oxygen into his nose. The other voices have been washed away by the storm. Was there one in the first place or is Jim imagining things? Now's not the time to find the answer to that because his head is aching.

Silence prevails. The voice's fingers are like bones, Jim notes to himself: heavy, solid, invisible except under some fallacy like skin but this time it's darkness. Bones is what he calls the voice. There are too many voices he's been hearing to keep calling Bones a voice. Besides, Bones is different. However, the roaring in his ears doesn't stop trying to drag him down, however. The crash of waves is resounding and bouncing in his mind and it feels like he has to shout his thoughts in order to hear them over the waves.

Sea foam gathers at his sides. Jim is back in the shallow water after being dragged so far and floating listlessly. Sea waves beckon him to go further, go deeper. The waves are picking him up again, gently swaying him as his breaths become shallow and the water becomes deeper. Maybe he doesn't need air, he can float just fine without. The sea's so quiet, so dark, waves of blue crash around him with the salty tang of saltwater in the air.

Down, down, down. Down she goes in the groan of finally giving up. A sinking feeling pulls him down farther and beckons him to fall. It's so quiet and he feels so heavy. No more air—he doesn't need it anyway. Salt water floods his nose and the pain is a slight stinging sensation. Jim doesn't hear the sirens shrieking again. Doesn't hear Bones talking to him frantically; asking for him to stay afloat. Bones tries to pull him out of the water going down, down, down. Other voices, frantic and tired are calling to him.

_No, no, don't rescue me._

Jim wants to sleep. He wants peace. And that's down, not up, Bones. Go away. He doesn't want to be rescued, but Bones doesn't seem to get the idea.

_The salt water stings_

At least he's feeling something. Water all around him and it burns in an cold fury, but the sense of choking isn't so painful. It's enough for him to be content just to feel something that isn't burning hot. Burning is for the fire that burnt down home.

No, a house, not a home. Not anymore. Burned houses swept away by the rain that heads back to the sea. So much gone and so much is too much.

"—ammit, don't pull this—again!" Bones sounds angry. Bones' voice echoes around him through the darkness. Jim doesn't want Bones to be angry with him. No, Bones was nice earlier. But the sea calls to him with sweet words and open arms ready to hold him tight and coos just like Mom did. Can't Bones hear it?

If it's possible, everything gets darker. It's all falling away to be washed back into the sea. In the sea, in the sea, where he's drowning and the saltwater stings but that's okay because it's almost over. Bones' voice is bubbling away. Now all he can hear is the soft gurgling of a voice drowning in the waves. That's all Bones ever was, so it won't hurt him.

Suddenly he's being forced up. Again, he realizes. This time he can't fight as he's being pulled further up out of the deep and more sounds are coming to him like the screaming siren. He really wants to break the stupid thing.

_No, no, let me go._ Did he say the opposite earlier? Everything's so fuzzy but he can remember drowning before even though he hasn't even had a beer yet. And why did it have to hurt to breathe? His lungs are screaming at him for some reason. That's _odd_—they don't need air anymore. Why are they screaming?

When he breaks the surface, everything comes rushing at him. There's Bones talking to him in a voice that reminds him of when Sam pulled him out of the river.

_Come back to me, Jim, _Sam told him of how he shook Jim like a ragdoll because he wasn't breathing. _Come—_

"—back to me, come on. Breathe, kid. Don't give up on me now." That's not Sam. Bones?

Fire burns his lungs. Seawater he sucked in earlier is making him want to cry because it eats away the precious tissue of his lungs. He's drowning but he's out of water and it boils his lungs.

"Bones, Bones, help me," is that his voice he doesn't even know but it's small and weak and pleading. The water churns and his lungs are crippling from the salt that threatens to burn him alive.

"Kid, listen to me, don't—" Bones is talking to him. So he did speak. No wonder why his throat is scorched. All of this is too much. Too much pain, too much hurt. Let go, go drift away in the sea. At least it won't hurt in there. Salt water rises in his throat. Bubbling and burning just like the ship that Dad went down on but that wasn't in water. Last gasps frantically sucking in air only to inhale seawater and it burns so badly like the levee that old Chevy drove into. If only he could scream.

Only he can't. He's drowning from the water in his lungs. Jim's eyes are stinging from saltwater that drips down his face. Pressure builds up like the tsunami wave before it hits the fragile body on the last sticks keeping him out of the water. And then he finds himself vomiting. From what he can feel he's hanging off of something, supporting his upper body with whatever he's lying on. Saltwater comes roaring and foaming out of his lungs and splashes onto a surface below.

It burns and he really wants it to stop. He can't scream while he coughs up the saltwater but he can feel tears falling down his face_. Help me, make it stop_, he pleads. The pleading becomes his mantra while lava spills from the cracks that let it all spill out and ooze. _Help me, please, make it stop, help,_

"I've got you, it's gonna be okay," If only Mom would have said that while he cried in the cellar.

A gentle touch is on his back. Gingerly but firmly to not hurt him but support him. The last of the liquid fire is out of his lungs and now he's back to coughing hoarsely. Everything hurts like he's been run over by a car. and then drowned.

"Hey, can you hear me?" Bones. Bones is holding him, or his back, rather. But Jim can't answer. He's got no control over himself anymore. Can't see, can't feel, can't move, but can hear, he bitterly recalls. "Kid, come on," Bones sounds urgent. What's going on? Where is he where Bones is? The last place he was—blank. Error: water damage to memory.

Go figure.

"Kid," _James, _he can hear his mother calling for him. She's been dead for so many years, what could she want with him now? Mom's been haunting him since the day she left. He still can't forgive himself.

And then Jim first feels pain. Not drowning, no, or suffocating, but _real_ pain. In the recently filled sea of numbness, he's grateful when something stings his neck and sends a shiver down his spine. Soon after this the waves in his ears aren't crashing anymore and his muscles and skin are buzzing like the first drink at the bar.

Bones is still talking to him. Well, from what Jim can hear. He's too busy marveling in the fact his head's not pounding so hard anymore and he can feel himself breathing. He's alive, he knows. But his eyes aren't seeing. Jim almost wishes for the blinding light from before but then settles on trying to see in the darkness. Apparently Bones notices he can't see and he feels rough hands on his face that hold him gently.

"Shit, you've got severe head trauma." What? "Chapel, get the CT room prepped. The damage is worse than what the EMTs wrote up."

A woman's voice answers Bones before the sound of heels clicking against a floor. Jim hasn't noticed these details before. It frustrates him that he still doesn't know where the hell he is.

"Bones," Jim tries again. This time it's a bit sturdier but his throat burns with acid. Wait, what was he going to say? The words in his brain died on his tongue. Probably from the saltwater.

"Take it easy, kid." Bones replies. "You've died on me three times. That's three times more than enough." His voice is gruff but Jim can tell it's because he's relieved. What a strange man. If that's what Bones is, of course. He could just be on another one of those acid trips from those little white and red pills straight from the Orions. The first time he tried one it was like he pole danced on Mount Everest, fucked a shark in the ocean, and had the life ripped right out of him and stuffed back in with staples and some Orion glue. Damn it was intense but it wasn't enough for just one night. Drugs were the lives he could have had but never does and damn he really wants to get back to dreaming.

"I can't see," Jim finally chokes out. His voice is so small and pathetic he wouldn't be surprised if Bones doesn't hear him. Something's being put in his nose. And he struggles.

"Hey, don't fight me." Bones puts a steadying hand on Jim's chin. "You're not getting enough oxygen. The tube won't hurt you." Jim trusts him, he realizes. At any other time he would've laughed. He hasn't trusted anyone since Mom left.

"I c-can't see, Bones." His tongue tastes bitter. The taste only gets worse when he croaks again. A cold chill races down his spine and seizes every last nerve.

"I know, kid." Bones is oddly calm about this. Jim suddenly realizes that Bones pities him. A surge of anger courses through Jim and through the bloody slush in his veins. Although rage is a more applicable term because it's not fair and he won't deal with this shit right now. He doesn't need any damn pity for God's sake, he's not a child.

Why is Bones calm when he can't see? Doesn't he know that it's like drowning in the dark and this time Sam won't be able to pull him out of the water? Beeping interrupts his tirade. Bones is talking, again.

"Hey, hey; you need to knock it off. I know you can't see, and we're trying the best we can right now to fix you up. It's temporary from what I can tell, so calm down." He sounds irritated. He's got no right to be angry when he isn't the one who can't stop drowning.

Before he can unleash a string of swears forming on his tongue, a shudder ripples through him. It starts at the very tip of his vertebrae and spreads throughout his entire body. Soon his teeth are chattering and a hand rests on his shoulder. "C-Cold..." He's shivering so badly his brain's rattling inside his head. Is it raining? There's the familiar pitter-patters of teardrops coming from the sky and cold fingers cradle his back. Mom always cries when it rains and Jim crawls into her lap because the thunder and lightning is too much. Or, she used to.

So cold. "Hold on, kid." Fabric brushes against the metal railing of the biobed. Jim guesses that Bones has left. He shivers again and his teeth click and rattle his brain.

Jim feels lonely. "Bones?" His voice is tiny and small, and he's not sure he wants Bones to hear him. His hand that Bones once touched reaches for Bones. He meets air. Cold, dead, stale air.

Loneliness is like the emptiness in sitting around at an empty home and waiting for something or someone to happen. Loneliness is the empty Chevy he drives because it reminds him of how he "earned" it. Lonely like the empty roads in the rust-colored red Chevy leading up to a levee he knows about. Rejected is more like it though. Abandoned, solitude, isolation, ignorance. Oh so lonely. Maybe that's why he drove his Chevy...what? Jim rakes his brain for the origin of that thought. What was he doing? What Chevy?

Something heavy lands on his shoulders. He flinches, but then calms when he realizes it's a blanket. His fingers search for a corner while taking in the feeling of the soft fabric. The blanket's cotton and heavy but he can still feel the rain penetrating him as it beats against a window. It feels like soft taps of icy cold fingers and Jim shivers again while drawing the blanket closer around him.

"Kid, are you there?" Oh, Bones has been speaking to him. He knows it's not polite to ignore people: he can hear his mother chiding him in his head. _Jimmy, you need to listen to others._

That's what she said about Frank. It's what she said about Tarsus IV and Kodos. She said so many things. _Do this, do that; oh Jimmy, it's a dangerous world out there._

Mom. Don't go, please. Stay for a little longer and make a family with your boys. Or your Jimmy, because Sam's gone. When did she leave? Why did she leave him? Mom, you can't leave Jimmy alone with Frank. Frank's a bad man who made Sam run away. Don't go Mom, please don't go—

"Kid?" Bones again. Jim shakes his head in the barest of a fraction of an inch. His neck's stiff and sore from his head holding so many heavy memories. Water balloons pop when there's too much pressure.

Jim shivers. Even though there's a blanket on him, he can't feel anything but cold. His bones are aching with the pinpricks of stalactites setting in with the heavy permafrost of frostbite. His heart is cold to the core and the blood it pumps is slowly freezing over and spills out of the gaping wound that's never healed and slowly freezes of the rest of him. Cold slush dyed red—_snowcones_—shuffles through his veins and threatens to cut and freeze all that it touches.

"Bones," He's light years away. "I can't see." Beeping starts again. It starts slow and gets louder with each dull throb of Jim's heart. Each beat is fainter than the last. His hand shakes uncontrollably as it timidly seeks for the comfort and gentle hold of Bones who takes it without question.

Jim can feel himself crying before the first tears prick his eyes. Mental walls are falling down and release floods of emotion. So many years of pent of hatred, anguish, and loneliness come rushing out. It chokes his throat, forces sobs from him, and drips out of the tears coming from his eyes. He's so angry at himself and disappointed for crying that he tries to stop. But Bones crumbles the last of self-preservation with only a couple words.

"It's okay to cry, kid. Don't hold back." And that's it. Jim doesn't care if Bones hesitates to show this amount of compassion because the floodgates are down and there's nothing left anymore. Doesn't even care to register whether or not Bones pities him. Bones doesn't say anything after that even though Jim wants him to tell him he's good enough. He mourns for never being good enough for Winona, for losing his one and only brother, for allowing Frank to hurt him. _God, why is he such a failure—_

No more tears fall. What feels like tsunami tides in his eyes that should storm down his cheeks and demand to choke the life out of everything he thought he had with a pinch of salt and an ugly smile but there's nothing. He wasn't crying when he drove that Chevy, no, he drove it into that levee. The policemen can lie and say that he veered off the road but only he knows the truth and why the _fuck_ is he still alive? He didn't drive into a levee just for shits and giggles.

It's all going down, down, down. Jim can piece together everything like a puzzle with each piece never meant to fit another. It's a sharp pain reminiscent of a plunge into a frozen lake when he was ten in the middle of winter. Sitting at a bar earlier, drowning his sorrows because today is the day his dad died saving the lives of eight-hundred people. Or maybe that's tomorrow with a shot of whiskey and rye and a hello to a pretty girl with legs that are the beginning of his end that just doesn't end.

So he did what one usually does at a bar: get drunk enough to forget. Open the mouth of shiny white teeth and painted smiles and drink until everything's an unconscious blur of emptiness. Forget Sam, Mom, Frank, Riverside Iowa, Tarsus IV, the hero George Kirk who just can't be his father because he could never live up to a name like that, every goddamn thing in the damn universe, especially himself. Drink more than enough and feel the false warmth of some cheap drink in the hollow of his stomach that reminds him sourly of how lonely he happens to be. Give a mysterious smile to a girl nearby—doesn't matter if she's on the dance floor with her girlfriends or eying you from across the bar. She doesn't need or have a name and he doesn't want it anyway. Bars are meant for forget and nobody which is why he's usually there. It's not like anyone cares, Jimmy. Down some more shots and grab a girl because he's not going anywhere fast.

Everything's a blur after that: a drunken haze pitch black like the bottom of a bottle and warm butterflies in his empty chest with the dream-like view and the promise of forget. No, no, he doesn't want to remember anything that happens. That's why he drinks to keep the loneliness away and not sulk because he's the golden boy repeat offender James T Kirk, _son of_—_no one_ really cares about him—Go away, no, no, _no._

Back to reality. Sirens blaring, people talking in a rush—Or is that just Bones talking—White noise blares like a transmitter losing signal. Main systems failing. Prepare for emergency—

No, no, breathe. In, out. In, out.

Inhale.

Something is piercing his neck and the sting ripples over his skin while cold waves rise and lap against his vein before spreading. A shiver runs down his spine and the sensation of his tongue turning into a cotton ball and it's sort of like being drunk. But this time there's no promise of forget and no way to know whether or not he'll remember and he does try to remeber what if feels like not to be lonely and alone at the same time and to have someone love him except there's this hole in his heart that doesn't fill with alcohol or women or meaningless promises.

Exhale. _Whoosh._

Silence.

* * *

_An attempt of doing something is all I can say about this. Honestly, it is the beginning of something and I happen to be not entirely sure.  
_

_Thank you for reading. More to come, possibly._


End file.
